The thing about teams who dominate in this country is that neutrals quickly tire of the superlatives and the fawning.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when most trophies headed to Anfield, the Norwich City fanzine was called Liverpool Are On The Tele Again, reflecting the nation’s resentment at the adoration lavished on them.

The next decade-dominating, trophy-winning machine, Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, drew similar levels of jealousy, spawning a badge worn by millions who couldn’t bear their superiority: ABU – Anyone But United.

And when Roman Abramovich began to sweep all before him the backlash was intense, fuelled by the arrogance of Jose Mourinho and the feeling that Chelsea were at the forefront of attracting a new breed of shallow fan who were in it for the glory.

The truth is, we have an unhealthy, or healthy, depending on your taste, distrust of success stories and it doesn’t take long for the applause to turn into a desire for them to fail.

Which is why it will be intriguing to see when the tide will turn against the team who are set to dominate for the foreseeable future, Manchester City.

Alex Ferguson's Old Trafford trophy-hoovering led to the rise of the ABU brigade (Image: Daily Mirror)

With a 16-point lead in mid-March threatening to turn the Premier League into the Scottish Premiership, the resentment should be surfacing — especially with the obscene amounts of cash the Sheikhs have thrown at them.

But it feels like we could be in for a longer honeymoon than usual.

There isn’t the same emnity towards Sheikh Mansour’s City that Abramovich’s Chelsea generated.

Maybe that’s because they’ve never had the sense of entitlement that appeared very quickly under Mourinho.

Chelsea got sneeringly accused of buying the title years before Man City were (Image: Getty)

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Maybe it’s to do with Pep Guardiola. The man who created in Barcelona, the most exciting side everyone who didn’t see the Brazil team of 1970 can remember, is building again on the same lines, and the clinical beauty that’s emerging is a pleasure to behold.

Or maybe it’s because outsiders suspect that City fans of a certain age, riddled with decades of insecurity and gallows humour, are still waiting to wake up from this Lottery-winning dream.

I’m guessing there were quite a few of those old fans making their way back from Stoke on Monday night thinking back 20 years and feeling a cold shiver down their spine before pinching themselves.

Guardiola's expensively-built Blues play some of the most beautiful football modern fans have ever seen (Image: AFP)

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They’ll have remembered being slumped in that ground in May 1998 after beating Stoke 5-2 but still being relegated into the third tier, after Port Vale won at Huddersfield, thinking the future could not be bleaker.

That their once-great club, now filled with journeymen players picked by journeymen managers, and financially a joke compared to their all-conquering neighbours, were heading towards the abyss.

They could never have imagined that ten years later they’d be taken over by the United Arab Emirates and, 20 years on, they’d leave the same Stoke stadium two wins away from wrapping up the title with eight games left, enabling them to concentrate on becoming champions of Europe, too.

May 1998 — Man City win their season finale at Stoke 5-2 but still go down to the third tier (Image: Daily Mirror)

March 2018 — Man City win at Stoke to move within two games of the title, the second leg of a potential Treble (Image: AFP)